Sketches | Case Studies | Thoughts

Category: Branding

As I said at this time last year, I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve updated! I have a lot of content that I want to start sharing here, and definitely more regularly. First up: the booth I designed for Phone2Action’s presence at the Consumer Electronics Show, also known as CES, presented by the Consumer Technology Association.

For our booth this year, we had a very large space, and decided to do something a little unusual—the structure itself is actually in a shape of a lightning bolt. This provided additional space for the screens and for lounge space.

The design elements of the booth are fairly simple—colors and design elements from our brand, our vision statement, and a brief explanation that viewers could quickly grasp from afar (“digital grassroots advocacy”).

We also created a large photobooth with a custom graphic frame so that viewers could take a selfie after taking action on a campaign to support innovation.

This was the most nontraditional booth I’ve ever designed, and on the tightest timeline (design turnaround was less than five days)—and everyone was really happy with how it turned out.

Wow, I can’t believe I haven’t updated this blog since last year. Things have been very busy at work, including completing one of my largest projects to date, so I have not been able to update this blog as much as I’ve wanted to. But, I’ve still been doing a couple little freelance projects.

A friend of a friend from college recently started her own small business, and decided it was time to invest in a logo. Caroline of Happify Bath Boutique was a pleasure to work with—it’s always easier to work with people you already know—and I’m so happy I was able to design something she loves. I really enjoyed this project because I was able to work on my hand lettering skills.

I started by doing some rough initial concept sketches, and from there we explored three options.

From there, I developed a few color options for each one:

In the end, we decided to combine one of the lettering concepts with one of the color concepts, for the below result:

I’m really happy with the final result, and more importantly, Caroline is too! I’m excited to see how she uses the logo as her business grows.

A few months ago, my friend Julia, who I met while adopting our cat from the Fairfax County Animal Shelter, contacted me about doing a logo design for her. I was pleased to hear that she was starting her own strategic marketing service (and blog) for shelter cats, hoping to not only increase adoptions for hard to adopt cats, but teach others how to do so through marketing—Cat Hustler.

Julia had a very clear vision, and wanted something that was unique, eye-catching, and to the point. Not only would it need to meet traditional logo requirements, but since she is very into DIY and really creative, it would have to work on lots of different media. After we met to talk about the logo and her goals, I did some preliminary sketches.

After confirming that I was going down the right path, some preliminary logos were developed (a few below):

Julia really loved the middle one, and we refined it a little further.

Julia didn’t need much in the way of branding guidance, but we decided on fonts (Overpass, with Gill Sans as a secondary) and a color palette.

Client Testimonial

I’m really happy to report that the Cat Hustler loves it, and it has had great reception. Julia says, “It’s a perfect logo and people love it, but it’s also an exceptional specimen in the way of design. You knew it would be used beyond printed and digital applications, and made it work perfectly for a finicky DIY client.”

“I still can’t believe how easy Regina is to work with. She listened and advised with equal skill, cranked out mock-ups at record speed, humored the back-and- forth between details and minor edits like ear shape, and the timeline… just wow. Coming up with a clean, seal-style logo for cat stuff that hasn’t been done before is a challenge, and she knocked it out of the park.

Our two primary goals were met and exceeded. The first was to create something with such a clean, simple look that would 1) portray cat hustling as something that’s easy and 2) at least partially negate my large, unpolished presence when meeting people face to face. The second was to accommodate my DIY approach to everything. We didn’t know exactly how the logo would be used when designing it, but were sure that it would need to have lines and lettering thick enough to be cut with a Cricut and other untraditional (other than print & digital) applications. Thanks to the multiple files formats Regina provided, getting stamps made was easy. The design scales so well that a ¾” stamp was possible.

The second goal was a marketing objective; I wanted to make the branding inclusive rather than authorative. In other words, I want Cat Hustler to be a collaborative community, not a single person dictating best practices. Cat Hustler is a title one can give themselves, and that’s the make-or- break point in the branding. It’s what makes the logo desirable and why merch like t-shirts and decals will make effective tools for fundraising.”

It’s really nice to have a client that you can trust with taking your work and applying it properly.

Photos courtesy of Julia Grosz

It’s gone even further, and the logo can be found on a lot of places:

Photo courtesy of Julia Grosz

Photo courtesy of Julia Grosz

Photo courtesy of Julia Grosz

Photo courtesy of Julia Grosz

Photo courtesy of Julia Grosz

Photo courtesy of Julia Grosz

Photo by me

And that gorgeous gold foil black tote on the bottom? Julia very nicely made and gifted that to me! It’s so cool to see my work on so many different things, and with so many people!